A look Inside

This is the bit of the review that always has me a bit nervous. Some laptops actually come with instructions on how to open them, while others see such an exercise as something that should never be done. In this instance, we definitely have to evaluate this task as the secondary PCIe 4.0 slot is advertised as being available.


The first thing I noticed when looking at this part of the testing was that two of the screws had stickers over them. I also made a mental note of the screws having hex-type screw heads. Neat. Stickers are removable fortunately, and these screws are actually rather nice to see here. There are plenty of them spread all over the underside of the chassis.


As this is a loaner unit and Gigabyte tried to get me to sign a form promising no damage to the unit (I ignored said form :P), I left the stickers alone and refrained from removing the underside to peer into the Aorus 17. It is worth pointing out that although there is a second PCIe 4.0 NVMe slot available, it seems Gigabyte has taken some steps to make adding additional storage a bit more difficult compared to other brands like XPG, who gives you directions on how to add storage right in the manual.